While playwriting is now Rosemary Frisino Toohey's passion and her art, she came to theater only after a successful career in radio news.

After graduating from the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, she started at WETT in Ocean City, MD and then moved on to WITH in Baltimore, KLOK in San Jose, CA and then WHDH in Boston. After a year in Boston, she was invited to join NBC's all-news radio network, "NIS," gearing up at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. It was there that she met her husband Bill. When NIS foundered, she went to WMCA, a news-talk station, and then started anchoring on all-news WINS.

In 1980, the Toohey's first child, a son, was born. That same year her first play, An Arrangement of Convenience, was staged in New York by the Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of its annual marathon of one-act plays. Frisino Toohey's entrance into the world of playwriting was described as "promising" by The New York Times.

While still in New York, a daughter was born in 1982, and a second son came along in 1984. Frisino Toohey never abandoned her writing completely but between motherhood, working part-time at WINS and stringing for Radio 2WS in Sydney, Australia, there were other demands to be met.

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The family relocated in 1986 when her husband accepted a job at a public radio station in her hometown of Baltimore, and Frisino Toohey began anchoring for all-news WTOP in Washington, DC. In 1992, the family grew again with the adoption of a daughter, the Toohey's fourth child.

In 1996, Frisino Toohey accepted WTOP's offer to work full-time in morning drive, but the following June, everything changed. Driving to work at 4:00 a.m. one morning on the Capital Beltway, she was rear-ended at high speed by a hit-and-run driver. The car was totaled, and she was hospitalized with serious injuries.

The crash became a turning point in her life. She and her husband decided she should stop working in radio, and commit herself full-time to playwriting. That was 1997, and by early '98, she had completed her first full-length play, Gladys in Wonderland. It was staged the following year at the Vagabonds Theatre as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. She has now written a total of seven full-length plays and 18 one-acts. Of those 25 plays, 18 have been produced.

Her one-act comedy, In the Tank is published by Dramatic Publishing, Inc., Woodstock, IL and is on the shelves of 14 public and university libraries, including the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Texas A & M, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

As a member of the Screen Actors Guild, she sometimes works in film and TV. She's been seen briefly in Rocky Balboa, Wedding Crashers, National Treasure Runaway Bride, Gods and Generals, Ladder 49, Hack and The Wire. She has a supporting role opposite Marcia Gay Harden in the upcoming film. Home. Frisino Toohey has also returned to WTOP, working just one shift a week.

Her passion however, remains theater and she continues writing, supported by her husband Bill and their four children.

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